First of all, what's up with the cover of this magazine? "A Body Built For Sex"? (Weren't all of our bodies built for sex, in order to prevent the species from dying out?) "Tighten Your Tummy"? Really? Way to sell magazines.
Next, let's move on to the article itself. In the summary I saw posted on Yahoo, it states that Britney does two 90-minute yoga sessions every week. I doubt that it's the same kind of yoga that I do. When I think of a celebrity doing yoga, I immediately picture that Bikram-barking-orders-sweating-in-a-100-degree-room yoga. Maybe that works to get her fit, but to me, that's not yoga.
Okay, so, yoga styles aside, the article goes on to talk about how she has to work harder, now that she's 31. Well, d-uh. The human female body isn't really supposed to look like that. She had two kids. Where's the paunch? I've got one kid, and I'll probably never get rid of that paunch, and that's okay.
Where's the softness? Where are the natural curves?
Then, her diet. She talks about how much she loves brownies, cookies, and spaghetti, but she eats a Nutrisystem-type diet to "get in shape": a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and protein and veggies for dinner. In WHAT universe is that a healthy diet? A synthetic, heavily-processed shake instead of real food? No wonder she looks like she's starving.
I think, underneath it all, is my discomfort with how this magazine is trying to make us feel about our bodies. It's one thing to want to improve your health by taking care of yourself, but to me, this magazine cover is just playing up on all our insecurities. So what if you have a little flab on your tummy? My flab is from growing my son, which is arguably the most important thing I've ever done. Who cares if my paunch sticks out a bit?
Obviously, magazines that promote accepting ourselves don't sell in our culture and our society. But telling people that they're not good enough and should look like THIS, well, that's how you sell magazines. That's how you sell diet aids and diet books and supplements and...well, that's how you build a multi-billion dollar industry. You tell people that they're not good enough.
But, guess what?
You are.
1 comment:
Now you know why I no longer read these types of magazines. In fact, I gave them up almost 15 years ago when "Allure" ran a 5 or 6 page spread of women working out in a gym in full dominatrix outfits. Ugh.
As for this magazine cover, it is nauseating. Imagine what it's like to be raising a girl now days. Not that having a son is probably any easier. What sort of message is this sending to him about women and their looks and bodies?
Also, more than likely she has been photo shopped.
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